I’ve just barely made a start on Ultima 3 today. Its a long, long time since I played this but from starting out it looks like its going to take longer than the first four games put together. This was the first game published by Origin. The box is a lot smaller this time, but the quality of the packaging is excellent again. The cover illustration of the demon would have been enough to make me buy the game, but the manuals are superbly produced, especially the spell books. Each spell is on its own page with illustrations around the border relating to the spell. I love the effort that went into these things, and they really help to set the scene when the game itself is so basic. 

I’m playing the Ultima collection version with the upgrade patch to add ega graphics and midi music. I’d quite liked the idea of playing the nes version originally on my psp but the music put me off before I got started so I’ll stick with the pc.

I’ve played maybe 30mins to an hour so far. The game appears much more structured than its predecessors. The dungeons are no longer random and they now contain fountains, which heal you, cure poison or poison you. Line of sight has been added to the overhead maps, so you now cant see round corners, or any distance at all in forests. I’ve gone for a very traditional fighter, thief, cleric, and wizard party. So far, I’ve just spent some time gathering gold. All my characters are still level 1, starting out in this game is quite difficult but I’ve got a few thousand in gold together, and a load of food mainly by raiding the 1st floor of the same dungeon over and over, finding my way there in the dark and raiding the same chests. I keep having to swap dungeons to get to a healing fountain though due to chest traps. If I can level up my guys a bit and get some more hit points it will be much easier and faster. I’m planning on limiting my trips to Ambrosia so I really want to get all my guys to 9999 gold before I go there but this will mean a lot of grinding to start out. I’m not even going to attempt to explore the world until they are stronger.